During the “Arab Spring” (what a loathsome, patronizing, attitude we express!) the US Government repeatedly socialized ideas about how Twitter, etc, were important to helping anti-government protests, i.e.:
The Obama administration, while insisting it is not meddling in Iran, yesterday confirmed it had asked Twitter to remain open to help anti-government protesters. [guardian]
Voltaire by Houdon
B: What is natural law? (*)
A: The instinct that gives us a sense of justice.
Talleyrand, Napoleon Bonaparte’s chief diplomat, could have taught Trump’s team of motley fools a thing or two thousand. One of his famous observations: “Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake.” Sun Tzu would have nodded.
Yesterday I discussed the retro-scope of information-gathering[1] and I probably should have mentioned that President Obama – along with commuting Chelsea Manning’s sentence – handed the citizens of the US a great big “F.U.” Just before leaving office he quietly changed how the NSA is allowed to share information, considerably expanding the power of the intelligence apparatus.
The US Constitution is not a special document. It’s traditional for Americans to say something flattering about the great political geniuses who devised the US political system, but I don’t think they were so hot: after all, the country they built didn’t last 100 years before it fell apart in a vicious civil war. The democracy of the republic is a multi-levelled sham, first because something like 70% of the population (women and slaves) were disenfranchised, secondly because the franchise was mooted by the superimposed electoral college.
Obama +1
I’m happy about this. Barack Obama, you complicated, inconsistent, unamerican, brilliant, interesting man. I voted for you the first time because you said you’d close gitmo and get the US out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I didn’t vote for you the second time because you expanded the drone killings, continued to erode the war powers resolution, and destroyed Libya. You were barely the lesser evil. Now, you’ll be missed and that’s a statement about how bad it’s going to get.
Jeff Bezos has just purchased the biggest house in Washington – a gorgeous $24 million textile museum designed by the great architect John Russell Pope. Plans are to turn it into a single family home.[1]
How to look like you’ve been sitting with your head in the sand for a decade:
DHS Labels Elections As Critical Infrastructure[1]
As you can probably guess, I get a lot of emails related to whatever’s going on in the security world. There was a very short buzz around the “Russia Hacking” thing but very few security practitioners care about it at all. Except one, who sent me this:
The Boy Scouts of America have booted a transgender boy. Because, uh.